


wake up (young lovers)

by argyros (argentumluna), MooseFeels



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Agoraphobia, Death, Horror, M/M, Resurrection, Stalking, Swamp Thing - Freeform, Violence, a bing if you will, garden, it's a baby bang, it's....less upsetting than the tags make it sound i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 08:38:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14053116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentumluna/pseuds/argyros, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: A stranger lets Viktor in from the rain.Yuuri has a love that not even doors can keep away.





	wake up (young lovers)

**Author's Note:**

> All of my deepest love and affection to argyros for the beautiful beautiful art and to marblegiraffe for the work as a beta; this thing would not exist without them.

The shop is small and dingy, but everything about this part of town is dingy.

Yuuri adjusts his glasses, before he pulls them off and cleans them on the edge of his sweater. It would be a little easier if his fingers weren’t wrapped so thoroughly in bandages.

Yuuri loves plants; he’s not sure they love him back.

Yuuri grabs a dry rag and begins to clear some of the dust and schmutz from the shelves. He should close up soon, head upstairs to his apartment. He should, but he can’t drag himself away. There’s something about the light from the cooler. There’s something about the light from the streetlamp. There’s something about the smell-- of the water that the flowers rest in, the smell of the flowers themselves. There’s something about the air. It keeps Yuuri here. It keeps the doors open.

Yuuri throws the dry cloth to the bin for laundry. He’ll run it tomorrow. It’s nearly ten.

The door opens.

“We’re just about to--” Yuuri says.

“Please,” the stranger interrupts.

Yuuri didn’t realize it was raining. The man is soaking wet. His hair sticks to his face, his clothes stick to his body.

He’s _beautiful_.

Yuuri nods, struck.

The stranger nods back. The glass door creaks as it shuts behind him.

“Do you-- you have a bathroom?” The stranger asks. His voice stutters. He sounds like he’s been crying.

Yuuri nods. He heads behind the counter and pulls the curtain aside.

The man’s eyes dart, side to side, and he dashes quickly into the bathroom.

Yuuri watches the space he once occupied, unable to look away.

Yuuri licks his lips. He looks outside. The rain is coming down in huge, dramatic sheets. Thunder rumbles, just a little.

Yuuri’s not sure why, but he steps forward and locks the shop door. Turns the sign to closed. He steps behind his counter and sinks down low to the floor, his back against the wooden shelving.

Yuuri listens.

There’s a long, tense moment, punctuated by the roll of thunder. There’s the aborted ringing of the bells above his door, the sound of the lock catching in the door. Yuuri thinks maybe he hears voices.

There’s more thunder. The slap of rain against his windows gets harder.

Yuuri counts the seconds into minutes, and when he peers up, over the edge of the counter, there’s no one there.

Yuuri swallows.

He stands up and knocks on the bathroom door.

There’s no response.

“They’re gone,” Yuuri says.

Yuuri hears a long, unsteady sounding sigh. The door unlocks.

He’s still beautiful.

Through the crack in the open door, Yuuri can see how his silvery hair, wet, is settled over his face and eyes, clinging to the contours of his cheeks, his jaw, his neck. His eyes are blue, and bright.

“I’m Yuuri,” he says, looking at him.

The stranger tucks a long lock of silvery hair behind a round, well formed ear and says, softly, “I’m Vitya.”

Yuuri nods. “Ah-are you hungry?” he asks. His voice gets away from him.

Vitya nods, in the gap between the door. “I shouldn’t-- I should leave,” he says. “I have been already enough trouble.”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I live just upstairs. I could cook something or I have leftovers or you could take a shower. Or just wait for the rain to pass.”

Vitya, the stranger, looks at Yuuri for a long time.

Yuuri swallows drily.

This is the last thing he remembers, before he dies.

* * *

 

Makkachin’s not a guard dog, but she does make Viktor feel wonderfully safe.

Viktor always jokes at the vet that she’s a rescue, just like him. She has a load of light, coffee colored curls and a surprising amount of energy for a dog her age. She always greets Viktor at the door. She goes on long walks with Viktor, whether just down the street to the little market near his fifth floor apartment (higher than anyone could climb) or to the library or to therapy or to the doctor. Makkachin goes with Viktor just about everywhere, and it’s almost like being normal, not that Viktor’s life was very normal before it happened.

But Viktor lives in a new city now, in a new state, and he lives a new life, even if his old life still haunts him.

Viktor gets up from his chair at the library-- it's four thirty, and part of what's great about this job is that the rest of the staff is generally pretty understanding about Viktor wanting to be home before dark. He clips Makka's leash onto her collar. He has a bag with some research tucked into his bag-- he's working on securing a few sources for some people, and he wants to read through some bibliographies in his spare time to make sure he's directing them to the right place.

Viktor walks with Makkachin the six blocks from the library to the flowershop, where he buys a spray of wide, friendly sunflowers, and then he walks the remaining four blocks to his apartment building, where he says hello to the doorman, enters in his passcode for the door to the elevator, unlocks his deadbolt, enters in his passcode for the electronic lock, and heads inside.

The library pays well. The court settlement? Even better.

Viktor hangs his bag up on the coatrack by the door. He slips out of his shoes and takes off his coat. He unclips Makka's leash and hangs it up. He grabs his bag again and tucks the sunflowers back under his arm, and then he unlocks the door between his foyer and the rest of the apartment.

Viktor's apartment isn't huge, but it's a comfortable size for him and Makka. He has an open living room and kitchen. There's a bathroom to the side and his own bedroom, as well as an office; both of them lock sturdily from the inside.

Viktor tosses his bag onto the couch, and he grabs a vase for the flowers.

Or, rather, Viktor takes flowers from last week and takes them from a vase. He shakes the water from their stems and lays them carefully on his kitchen counter. He trims the ends of the sunflowers and places them in the vase. He trims the wet ends from the old flowers and ties them with butcher's twine.

He carries the vase and the old flowers back to his bedroom.

Viktor's glad he doesn't have to show anyone his room. He's not sure how he'd explain.

Since it happened, they've just made him feel safe.

There are racks and stands in his room, full of the long spills of cheap pothos and english ivy. Interspersed, in vases and water glasses and jars are bouquets, in varying states of freshness. And from his ceiling, and array of flowers slowly drying. It's close and riotous and green, and the green-ness of it all, it makes him--

Viktor stands on his bed and hangs the new flowers (deep, purple globes of peonies) from the ceiling.

When he lays in bed at night, when he looks up at the ceiling, it feels like being underneath a watercolor. All of the color and texture flows together in a soft, strange sort of way. Viktor loved flowers before what happened _happened_ , but he feels a kind of intense, overwhelmed adoration for them now.

Viktor lays down on his bed, under the flowers, and he closes his eyes.

Opening the bathroom door, _Yuuri_ standing there, all dark eyes and gentle smile and soft, kind voice.

Viktor tries to remember the fleeting kindness of it all. He tries to hold the name like a gem in his mind. He tries to remember _this_ and not Andre climbing through the bathroom window. He tries not to remember the blood and blood and _blood_.

Viktor tries to remember the flowers, in the dark garden bed behind the shop. He tries not remember the knife, the blood, the rain, the screaming.

Viktor lays on his bed, his bedroom lit by the fading evening sun, and he closes his eyes, and he remembers. He forgets.

 _Vitya_.

Viktor opens his eyes, and in the next moment, it’s night. It’s pitch black, but for the light leaking from the living room through his open door, but for the glow of the the streetlight.

LIke this, Viktor can almost imagine the flowers are alive.

His phone rings, and Viktor sits up to answer it.

“Hello?” he says.

“Viktor,” Chris says on the other end. “We’re going clubbing; come with?”

Viktor takes a deep breath. “Thanks, but Makkachin, I think, would not like the noise? And I have trouble.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Are you sure?” He asks. “We could go to a movie instead. Or dinner. Surely she doesn’t like being cooped up in that apartment all the time.”

Viktor closes his eyes. “I appreciate the offer,” Viktor says. “But I shouldn’t. I have some work I have to do, too.”

Chris is a friend from work. He doesn’t know why Viktor moved here. Viktor doesn’t tell anyone.

“Viktor,” Chris purrs. “You’ve been here almost two years. We feel like we barely know you. Come out.”

“Maybe another night,” Viktor says. “We could plan ahead of time. Somewhere quiet.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Chris says. “I’ll bring the wine.”

Viktor looks through the crack in his door, toward the living room. “Of course,” he says. “I’ve heard stories.”

“You?” Chris exclaims, disbelieving.

“I’m private, Christophe, but I do have _ears_ ,” Viktor replies. “ _Do svidanya_.”

He hangs up, and he looks at his phone in his hand for a long moment, before he lays back on his bed. He squeezes his eyes shut for a long time and exhales.

“Vitya.”

Viktor opens his eyes and--

He screams.

* * *

 

* * *

Things are different now. Yuuri feels things differently now.

He feels like a different sense the pressure of the air against his skin. He feels the ambient buzzing of humidity. He feels the drift of the wind. He feels the rumble of thunder as surely and as acutely as he once felt his own heartbeat.

When Yuuri had a heart.

Now, though, he has an uncommon space over his chest. Where once there was the flesh of himself, there is a crack and hole that sprouts rich and green with ice plant, creeping juniper, old man's beard, candytuft. It feels as indivorcable from himself as once his blood did. All of the plants do. All of the greenness does.

Yuuri looks down, at Vitya, and he knows he is changed too.

He still looks so long and lean. He’s fuller in the shoulders though, no longer so skeletal. The bruise that flashed over his right eye has disappeared, but his long hair has been cut, to settle just over his elegant cheekbones. He’s so beautiful.

“Vitya,” he murmurs, just loud enough to see if he can rouse him from the sleep that so clearly troubles him. His fists are threaded into the bedsheets. There’s something tense written across his features.

He’s doesn’t calm, but he does stir, enough to blink awake and sigh heavily.

Yuuri knows he's watched Vitya like this for a long time. He's not sure how long, though.

Things are different now, and Yuuri's memory, his thoughts, play tricks on him.

That’s when Vitya's phone rings.

Does his voice sound different? Is the sweetness there changed? Are both of them too changed? Yuuri wishes he could follow what was being said. He wishes he could trace what it all means. He knows that once he could. He knows he could before.

“Vitya,” he repeats, as he lays back down onto his bed, and when his eyes open, they are still the crystal blue of clear, clear water.

It hurts to see his wide, lovely mouth twist to scream.

“No, please, it’s me,” he says. “Please.”

_Please. See me. Look at me._

Vitya’s lovely hands drift upward to cover his mouth. Tears bead at his eyes.

Suddenly, Yuuri’s no longer above him. He’s beside him.

“Yuuri?” he asks, his voice so quiet in the room.

Yuuri can feel Vitya’s voice addressing him like he can feel the distance of sunlight, like he can feel the coming of the rain, like he can feel every squirm and motion and movement in the soil. Yuuri can hear Vitya like a whole new sense. The singularity of it overwhelming. Everything.

Yuuri nods. He looks at Vitya. At the curve of his mouth, obscured by the fan of his fingers. The fall of his hair. The curve of his neck. The concave flex of his shoulders toward his chest. Yuuri is close enough to him he can feel the heat of Vitya’s body radiant against him.

Like a touch, Yuuri can feel VItya’s eyes on him.

Vitya shakes his head, but then he reaches out, to cup Yuuri’s face in his hands, to run this thumb over the shape of Yuuri’s own cheekbone.

“I thought you wore glasses,” Vitya whispers.

Yuuri shrugs. Maybe he did. He doesn’t know anymore.

“How?” he asks. “What-- what happened? How did you get in?”

“I don’t know,” Yuuri answers, truthfully. “I just-- I did. The flowers let me in.”

“The flowers?” he asks.

Yuuri turns his head, to kiss the palm of Vitya’s hand. He’s so beautiful.

Vitya’s breath hitches, barely audible in the room.

“Are you alive?” he asks. “Are you real?”

“I don’t know,” Yuuri answers, truthfully. “It feels different.”  
Vitya’s hand moves, to Yuuri’s chest.

He pushes back the shirt-- what Yuuri thinks he must have been wearing when it happened, and Vitya gasps.

His hands are warm against Yuuri, against the place where Yuuri no longer has a heart.

“Why?” Vitya asks.

“I want you,” Yuuri answers. “I wanted you.”

Vitya looks at him. Vitya touches him. Vitya’s breath the very air against Yuuri’s skin.

“I left,” Vitya whispers. “I ran.”

Yuuri’s hand drifts to Vitya’s. “I know you,” he says.

He knows him like he knows the stretch of roots in the black soil. He knows him like he knows the waiting of blooms to burst. He knows him like he knows pulse of death.

Yuuri knows him.

“Yuuri,” Vitya whispers.

“Never let me go,” Yuuri says. “Never look away.”

Vitya is warm and alive. He thrums. He buzzes.

He’s everything.

Vitya nods. He licks his lips. They’re pink and full and beautiful. The blooming of something. The  changing of something.

Yuuri cups his face in his hands.

Yuuri’s not sure when he pulled forward to straddle his hips. He sits, just above Vitya. His jaw is firm under his fingers. His skin is smooth. His expression rapt, overwhelmed, unplaceable. Yuuri tilts his face upward, to pull him into his kiss.


End file.
